Legal advice was sought about force-feeding an Iranian asylum seeker who was near death on a 44-day hunger strike, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says.
Saeed Hassanloo, who has spent four-and-a-half years in immigration detention, is now accepting medical help in a Perth hospital.
Mr Dutton said he had looked into whether fluids and food could be forced upon the 25-year-old, but legal advice was it would be considered an assault under West Australian law.
He said he was told Mr Hassanloo did not have a valid refugee claim and did not face persecution upon return to Iran, and he was standing firm that the 25-year-old would remain in immigration detention until he was sent home.
"The difficulty for me is that if you give yourself in to what is essentially emotional blackmail ... the clear advice from my department is that I would have hundreds or thousands of people go on hunger strikes tomorrow," Mr Dutton told ABC radio on Tuesday.
"We can't have a situation where people can come here demanding to stay when they don't have a claim to stay."
Reverend Chris Bedding of the Darlington-Bellevue Anglican parish said that was incorrect.
Because Mr Hassanloo converted to Christianity in Australia, he faced execution in Iran.
Rev Bedding said Mr Hassanloo had been trying to appeal against the rejection of his refugee claim but his case manager had not returned calls.
Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young called on Mr Dutton to review the man's case.
"The minister can't just shirk responsibility for this," she told reporters in Adelaide.
The Refugee Action Coalition said it wanted Mr Hassanloo and all other Iranians held in indefinite detention to be released.
